In the 1990s, British grifter Alan Conway posed as director Stanley Kubrick and bilked the ignorant out of small change or sex acts in sordid scams. Hardly Barry Lyndon material, though director Brian Cook cranks up the Handel saraband that served as Barry’s main theme (as well as The Blue Danube and other classic motifs from Kubrick’s films) at key moments, and John Malkovich has a great time as the huckster. In essence a seedy, swishy drunk, Malkovich’s Conway channels Charlton Heston, Slim Pickens, and Fran Drescher in his various Kubrick incarnations. His victims are all dullards, clowns, and fools, and neither does Conway offer much beyond his superficial audacity, pitifulness, and flamboyance. As for the vagaries and the angst of identity, the deepest film goes is a drunken stroll along the beach. This Conway never gets close to Kubrick. Neither does Cook, though he was a long-time collaborator of the late filmmaker; his movie might just as well be titled Color Me Kramer.

Master of war This article originally appeared in the June 26, 1987 issue of the Boston Phoenix.

Company man In at least one of its toss-away scenes, Joshua Seftel’s War, Inc. rises to the level of brutal bad taste that distinguishes master satirists from Jonathan Swift to Stanley Kubrick.

Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats Here’s a subject that really could have used a Stanley Kubrick or a John Frankenheimer or a Robert Altman. But are there any great cinematic satirists left, auteurs with the knack for black comedy and cold-blooded irony?

Feel-bad cinema This critic's been carping for decades about feel-good cinema, how lousy it makes me feel, and this year I got the misery I begged for.

Sound bites In space, so the tag line for Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi thriller Alien goes, nobody can hear you scream.

Ghost of future past When film actor Keir Dullea turned up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo as the father of Angelina Jolie’s character in Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd , I was not only surprised to see him again onscreen, but amazed that he wasn’t dead.

Heavy casualties In 1989, filmmaker Brian De Palma directed the potent Hollywood feature Casualties of War , taking his audience back in time to a vile true-life incident from Vietnam.

Autumn peeves With pundits already reading political significance into summer blockbusters like The Dark Knight (“Is Batman a stand-in for George Bush? Discuss.”), the meatier movies of fall arrive not a moment too soon.

Schmucks unlimited It’s April, supposedly the cruelest month, but after a winter that seemed like 150 days of March, how bad can it be?